AD Famille Tu-154

Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency is telling operators of Tupolev Tu-154M narrowbodies to upgrade their aircraft by July or park them.

The agency’s chief, Alexander Neradko, points to out three major defects that need to be addressed: power failure due to battery overheating, fuel system malfunction and failure of the low-pressure compressor disk on the aircraft’s NPO Saturn D-30KU-154 turbofans.

Power failure due to the battery overheating was implicated in an incident involving a Tu-154M operated by Alrosa Airlines on the abandoned airfield in Izhma, in northern Russia in September 2010. None of the crew and 72 passengers were injured and the airline plans to return the aircraft into service this year after the engines are repaired. To prevent a repeat of the incident, the Russian authority suggests installing a battery failure indicator on the flight engineer’s control board.

The fuel pump issue was highlighted in December 2010 when a Tu-154M operated by Dagestan Airlines made an emergency landing at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport; the pilots had not noticed that the fuel pumps were switched off. Neradko insisted that all aircraft of this type should now be equipped with the fuel pump off mode alarm.

The engine problem was highlighted when the failure of D-30KU-154 engines due to a defective disk led to an accident of a Tu-154M at St. Petersburg Pulkovo Airport in 2008 and to a crash in Iran in 2009. NPO Saturn has tried to fix the problem, with some instrumentation introduced to replace visual inspections.

The Tu-154M is the latest model of the Tu-154 family of airliners, which has been the workhorse for Russian civil aviation for more than 40 years. The “M” model entered commercial operations in 1984, but this aging type has been gradually withdrawn from service in recent years. As of the beginning of 2011, Russian carriers operated 81 Tu-154Ms with UTair having the largest fleet of 15 aircraft. The operation of another Tu-154 variant, the Tu-154B, was banned temporarily in January after an aircraft operated by Kogalymavia caught fire during take off in Surgut.